


Binary Love

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill - The Losers ~ Cougar/Jensen ~ he writes love letters in binary</p>
            </blockquote>





	Binary Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cougars_catnip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cougars_catnip/gifts).



> Found this prompt and couldn't believe no one else had grabbed it yet. I don't know why it became a HSAU, but hopefully people still enjoy it. 
> 
> Prompt from Cougars_catnip on fic_promptly
> 
> Thanks to jujitsuelf for the read through, and thanks to quandong_crumble for the beta. She came to the rescue again with the tense (I really need to give up writing when tired) and fixing up my termanology. Because she knows the computer stuff that I don't.

There were a few good points about being the nerdy kid, the sci-fi geek. They were strongly outweighed by the bad points, but Jake tried not to focus on the negatives in life. He got good grades (mostly), even though the notes from the teachers on his report cards were often less than complimentary, with a reoccurring theme being "disruptive" and "disrespectful". He was a handy person to have around on quiz nights. And he had a bunch of almost entirely useless skills, like knowing Alderaanian insults, how to swear in Klingon (okay, maybe that wasn't technically anywhere in the script), how to write every colour in hexadecimal (though he still fails Art theory), and binary coding.

Numbers. He liked numbers, numbers made sense (unlike people) and they've never let him down (again, unlike people). And whoever said numbers aren't sexy had obviously never seen the new kid, Carlos, glaring his Math problems into submission. 

Now, Carlos, he was an entire world of teenage hormone induced trouble that Jake really had hoped to avoid at least until he was out of high school. But fate had never felt particularly inclined to be nice to him, so, yeah, like that was going to happen. The guy was gorgeous, all dark eyes, longer than "normal" (read: "boring") hair and that bloody smirk that nearly made him forget how to even breathe. And then there was that issue of the "good points" (read: "bad, ohshitterriblewhyisheaskingme") of being a nerd. The ever-present danger of being asked to tutor someone. So when Carlos approached him, scowling at his latest test results, and asked him for help with Math up until the end of year exam, he might have squeaked (and that was totally manly, and not at all like the sound a hamster makes when you step on it. Don't ask. Seriously. Don't.) and started babbling all sorts of nervous excuses like not having enough time (there might have been mention of macramé showdowns and underwater knitting lessons) but then all Carlos did was look mildly disappointed and start to turn away and suddenly his traitorous mouth was making all sorts of noises of agreement even while his brain was screaming at it to just shut up. 

And that (ladies and gentlemen) was how he ended up in the library after school hunched over a Math text book and hoping (read: worrying) that he didn't make a complete dork of himself, or that he might possibly smell bad, or that he was somehow going to make a mess of this (becausethatwasallheeverdid). 

He was still all kinds of awkward, and said a lot of things that people usually just pulled "are you for real" faces at, but Carlos got that slightly perplexed amused look and just nodded, even though Jake was pretty sure he had no idea what he was talking about half the time. But then, Carlos wasn't very talkative, so someone had to fill the silence before it turned awkward. 

The troublesome teenage hormones turned into a crush of sorts, and that turned in something else (no, don't even go there, putting labels on things is scary) and before he knew it, he wasn’t just tutoring Carlos in Math after school, he was hanging out with him during lunch and after school, going around to his house and meeting all of his sisters (read: Spanish Inquisition). And suddenly he had a friend. And friendship wasn't something you went and ruined by admitting to having feelings for said friend (even he knew that). 

But keeping quiet was never one of Jake's strong suits, and when you suddenly had a friend who you can tell all those secrets normally kept hidden to, it was hard to still keep one. 

That's where his (not so useful) skills came into effect. And maybe he should have known that writing down his confession in binary code wasn’t "telling" as such. He should have also known that writing down a string of numbers on graph paper ripped out of his exercise book and shoving it in Carlos' face before hightailing it out of there was actually a really bad idea. 

A couple of days went past, and the piece of graph paper didn't resurface at all, and he thought that perhaps it'd just ended up in the bin anyway. Which would have been fine, because writing: 

01001000 01101001 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01001100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01001100 01001111 01010100 00101110 00100000 01001101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110

[Hi. I really like you. Like a LOT. More than friends. Please don't hate me.] on a piece of paper and handing (shoving) it to Carlos might not have been the best idea ever. And a bin was a very safe place for bad ideas (that's where most of his been-awake-for-thirty-six-hours sandwich creations ended up. So, bad ideas + bins = safe/avoiding potential food poisoning). 

He certainly didn't expect for Carlos to hand him a piece of paper a week later, then waiting there patiently for him to unfold it and read it. He was greeted by a string of numbers, perfectly spaced out on graph paper and not in his own handwriting. It took a fraction of a second to realise what it said, and a much longer moment to realise exactly what it meant. 

01001000 01101111 01101100 01100001 00101110 00100000 01000100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01001100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01101111 01110011 01100101 00100000 01010011 01110000 01100001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01010111 01100001 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110110 01101001 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100011 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01010011 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101110 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00101100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100101 01101011 01100101 01101110 01100100 00111111

He read it again, looked at Carlos (and that self-satisfied smirk, sneaky bastard) then back at the paper [Hola. Don't hate you. Like you too. Those Space Wars movies you like are on cable Saturday night, did you want to come over for the weekend?] before nodding mutely (this was a date right? He didn't need cable to watch Star Wars, he had all the DVDs and Carlos knew that. So this was a date right?). Carlos took the piece of paper back, folded it back up into a perfectly neat rectangle, and (ohmygodhereallyjustdothat!) tucked it into Jake's back pocket, hastily looking around, and discovering the coast was clear, stretched up on tiptoes and pressed a quick kiss onto Jake's cheek (data input does not compute, immediate power down required). 

His brain might have gone off line then. He blinked slowly (read: rebooting) and Carlos was already walking off towards their next class, looking over his shoulder and shaking his head slowly. He rolled his eyes and waved a hand to indicate that Jake should follow him. 

He had a date. Saturday suddenly seemed far too far away. 


End file.
